


Spark

by AndreaLyn



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How could a spark have nearly taken her from him? The spark between them this time is somehow no less dangerous, even if no one is likely to die from a first kiss this electric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spark

On occasion, the bunks in the bus have a distinctive cell feeling to them, but some nights, Fitz welcomes the way the walls seem to close in on him like they’re pressing in tightly to keep him in. The thing is, it also keeps the world out and on nights like this with nightmares still so close at hand and Jemma having snuck in to join him with her pillow, Fitz wants to keep the world far, far away. Chitauri virulent strands and jumping out of aeroplanes have _no_ place in Fitz’s bunk. Usually, Jemma’s got no place inside of here either, but this is a new bit of a habit they seem to have fallen into.

May turns off the lights, sends all her wayward and terrible children to bed, and Fitz can practically time it. An hour after he retires to bed, Jemma will sneak her way in holding her pillow in her arms and curling her toes past the long pink flannel pajama pants she typically wears. 

“Fitz, could I trouble you...?” she always asks, even though she already knows the answer.

He pulls the covers up and shuffles to the side to give her the room she needs. It’s not that he’s surprised the night has become like every other moment of the day where they stand side by side. It’s almost like he ought to have expected it. He makes a show of glowering even though she’d once said his glare was as mild as the bark of a very small and fluffy puppy. He’d made sure to be terribly offended by that and hadn’t spoken to her for a full ten minutes.

Tonight is like any other of their nights; newly minted in routine, but comfortable in the way that feels as though they’ve done this for an eternity. While they start with a decent amount of space between them, something always breaks when they realise there’s nothing to stay distant for. She shifts until her head is nestled comfortably in the crook of his arm and he adjusts so that he can run his sleepy fingers up and down the bare skin of her arm, watching as the hairs stand on end as though they’re reacting to their own energy source pulling them upwards.

Fitz shakes his mind of the image of those mice floating and that horrible nightmare image of Jemma doing the same that’s plagued his mind since the _incident_.

She falls asleep first.

She always does.

Fitz wonders how she can seemingly shake off the incident so easily, but that’s not true. It’s not true at all. He watches the way she walks around the lab with just that extra hint of hesitation in her step. He honestly thinks it’s just that exhaustion pulls her to a restful sleep and he’s glad because she deserves every moment of it, every perfect moment, his best friend, his lab partner, his...

His Jemma.

There’s a choked feeling in his throat that Fitz struggles to fight past as he pulls her closer, burying his nose in the dark strands of messy hair she’s attempted to push into a ponytail. Sometimes he thinks about what might’ve happened if Ward hadn’t been so quick to take the pack from Fitz’s hands and he can’t, he absolutely and actually can’t...

His fingers tighten before resuming their steady routine and that’s when it happens.

There’s a jolt. It’s a spark, a small one, but terror grips Fitz and he thinks of losing her and how a tiny electrical spark had... “Jem,” Fitz urgently says, shaking her. “Jemma, wake up, you have to wake up this instant,” he says, shaking her that much harder as panic sinks into every inch of him and he doesn’t think about what a spark like that might’ve meant days ago.

Well, it would’ve meant they could go out of this world together.

He knows why he can hardly think of a life without her in it, but he’s never seen those feelings to light because it feels a terrible lot like settling. Or, it had, until he realised that just because he was in love with his intelligent, beautiful, strange, and perfect partner wasn’t settling when there was no one else in the world who fit him so well.

How could a spark have nearly taken her from him?

“Fitz?” she sleepily mumbles, shifting her head lower until her cheek rests above his stomach and her hand is draped over his hip, fingers splayed and getting precariously close to certain parts of his anatomy that he’s urgently willing to _stay down_. “You’re awake,” she says, as if he hasn’t been shaking her to that same state.

“Good of you to notice,” he retorts. “Jemma, will you wake up?”

She stretches out, her toes sliding down his calf and eliciting a pained moan from his stomach. He’s a patient man, he can even take things slowly, but she’s making things very har...very difficult, extremely difficult. Her eyes open slowly and she peers up at Fitz. “It’s not morning,” she says, a petulant sulk to her lips. “Fitz, I’m exhausted,” she gets out past a small yawn. “Let me sleep.”

“I can’t,” Fitz gets out, breathless as he tries to work the words out. “Jem, I can’t, I can’t sleep when you’re lying right there and there was a spark and do you know what that would’ve done to us, days ago? Do you know what that little charge would’ve done to our lives?”

Does she even know what the initial spark had done to them?

“Fitz!” she says, eyes wide. “Calm down!”

“I can’t,” he manages, but his fingers are already panicked as they push through her hair and he sinks down until he’s nose to nose with her, eyes shut as if he can keep the world out that the walls haven’t done well enough to exclude. “I almost lost you, you almost left me, you almost...”

“I didn’t,” she interrupts gently, smiling softly and how is it that she’s comforting _him_?

It’s too much to bear and something coiled inside him snaps. Leo Fitz is not a coward, not when it comes down to it and he eases his nose away, but only to give his lips a chance at kissing hers. His fingers soften in her hair and he begs and pleads and prays that she doesn’t push him away (a replay of his first kiss isn’t what he’s aiming for, here). He lets out an embarrassing sound that sounds to him like he’s relinquishing all that panic into the space between them, but it’s Jemma who grabs hold of his hair so tightly that a pulse of pain erases all the rest of the panic in his bones.

She kisses him like _this_ is the moment before she jumps, like she’s abandoning reserve and fear. She kisses him and murmurs ‘Leo, _Leo_ , my Leo’ against his lips and he’s always forgotten that he belongs to her as much as she belongs to him.

When they part, Jemma looks lost and wondrous.

“Ow!” Fitz hisses, when another sharp spark of electricity jolts them when her fingers meet his. “Is this some sort of after-effect of the virus?” he wonders, finding it funny how his mind can still fixate on the science when Jemma stares at him like she’s just discovered a new element. “I don’t mind,” he rushes to say. “If it’s what happens after a kiss like that, I don’t mind at all, especially not if you’re here. It’s all I need,” he gets out haltingly, finally taking a breath to calm himself. “You. Here.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Leo,” Jemma replies fondly. “You were beside me the whole time. It’s my turn to return the favour.”

She wraps her arms snugly around his torso and makes room for her leg between his and occupies his space like she refuses to cede a single inch of it.

“Fitz,” Jemma scolds mildly. “Get some sleep. Or else.”

“Or else?”

“Or else you’re not going to find out how I plan to wake you up in the morning,” she replies cheerfully, though her words are heavy with sleep. “Sleep, Leo. I’m not going anywhere,” she says, hand on his torso to ground him as if he’s the one jumping out of aeroplanes and out of his life.

Still, that’s one hefty promise and Fitz is pretty eager to find out exactly Jemma’s got in mind.

Besides, he thinks, she’s not going anywhere soon, his Jemma.


End file.
